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Syd Barrett : Themed Hospital Garden

Patients at Addenbrooke’s could soon be feeling comfortably numb in a special Pink Floyd-themed garden.

Two designers are trying to raise money to create a peaceful area where people recuperating from treatment can relax.

It will be called Syd’s Garden, in honour of Floyd founder member Syd Barrett, who was not only a keen gardener himself, but was also a patient at the Cambridge hospital before he died in 2006.

The garden is the brainchild of Stephen Pyle, who played in Cambridge band Those Without with Syd, and who now a scenic sculptor , and Paul Herrington, a garden designer from Fulbourn .

The proposed garden will include a picnic lawn, and also a sculpture of the Pink Floyd star.

The two men started a charity called Art Garden Health three years ago to design, install and maintain gardens for NHS hospitals at no charge, and Addenbrooke’s offered them a plot of land a year ago.

Stephen said: “We’re currently co-fundraising with Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT) to create Syd’s Garden and it’s due to open in the summer of 2018.

“The garden will be first permanent publicly accessible commemoration of Cambridge’s celebrated son, Roger (Syd) Barrett. As well as a founder member of Pink Floyd, he was an artist, a keen gardener, and also an Addenbrooke’s Hospital patient before his sad passing in July 2006.

“The garden will feature an elevated sculpture of Roger freewheeling on his bicycle, set in a picnic lawn. Guitar in one hand, artist’s brushes in the other, the sculpture captures the heady pre-Pink Floyd moments of the early 1960s.

“The site is adjacent to the main multi-storey car park, and is seen by Addenbrooke’s staff as a bitter-sweet threshold between home and hospital – bitter because of worries about a loved one’s health, sweet because of the healing and health education that happens within the hospital.”